Return to All News
You’re Dead? That Won’t Stop the Debt Collector
March 3, 2009
New York Times, by DAVID STREITFELD
MINNEAPOLIS — The banks
need another bailout and countless homeowners cannot handle their mortgage
payments, but one group is paying its bills: the dead.
Dozens of
specially trained agents work on the third floor of DCM Services here, calling
up the dear departed’s next of kin and kindly asking if they want to settle the
balance on a credit card or bank loan, or perhaps make that final utility bill
or cellphone payment.
The people on the other end of the line often have
no legal obligation to assume the debt of a spouse, sibling or parent. But they
take responsibility for it anyway.
"I am out of work now, to be honest
with you, and money is very tight for us," one man declared on a recent phone
call after he was apprised of his late mother-in-law’s $280 credit card bill. He
promised to pay $15 a month.
Dead people are the newest frontier in debt
collecting, and one of the healthiest parts of the industry. Those who dun the
living say that people are so scared and so broke it is difficult to get them to
cough up even token payments.
Collecting from the dead, however, is
expanding. Improved database technology is making it easier to discover when
estates are opened in the country’s 3,000 probate courts, giving collectors an
opportunity to file timely claims. But if there is no formal estate and thus
nothing to file against, the human touch comes into play.
New hires at
DCM train for three weeks in what the company calls "empathic active listening,"
which mixes the comforting air of a funeral director with the nonjudgmental
tones of a friend. The new employees learn to use such anger-deflecting phrases
as "If I hear you correctly, you’d like..."
“You get to be the person
who cares,” the training manager, Autumn Boomgaarden, told a class of four new
hires.
For some relatives, paying is pragmatic. The law varies from
state to state, but generally survivors are not required to pay a dead
relative’s bills from their own assets. In theory, however, collection agencies
could go after any property inherited from the deceased.
Read full
article here
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/business/04dead.html?_r=4&hp
Return to All News